Adressing Our Fears To Recover From CEN
September 15, 2021
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CEN 7 – Addressing our Fears Related to People-Pleasing
Hi everyone, this is Ludemia, aka Mia, and welcome to Heart-Mind Equation. This is Episode 7 of our CEN series.
Today, we are addressing recommendation #4, which is: Addressing our fears. And don’t forget to go on my website: heartmindequation.com, to access the worksheets I have put in place to accompany you throughout this episode.
In reaction to our past CEN (Childhood Emotional Neglect), many of us share similar fears. To name a few, we can think of the fear of disappointing others, blame, and criticism, fear of failure or incompetence, expectation from others, and most of all, the fear of insignificance. Overall, we fear, that our basic emotional needs get overlooked or simply, we fear being rejected for expressing those needs, verbally or behaviorally. That is partly why some of us who had experienced CEN, turn to people-pleasing. I would suggest you check my previous Episode 1- from the CEN series, in which I describe a few of our fundamental emotional needs.
One of the biggest fears experienced by some of us, people-pleasers is the fear of judgment from others, especially when we don’t do what they request or expect from us. That is partly because we fear the risk of disappointing others, to avoid rejection – blame and criticism. Those fears often bring us back to where we used to crave some acknowledgment from our parents for doing a good job in the house, or some validation from our teacher for doing well in an exam; being defended, or supported by a significant authority figure. This is when we have, falsely learned that we had to please them in order to be appreciated, and then, deserve their love.
We all know that one of our reactive behaviors, from our CEN, is our people-pleasing tendencies, seeking validation and appreciation from others. It could also be out of fear of being ignored or insignificant to the eyes of others. We then, do our best to deliver our best to everyone. Unfortunately, it gets us to us fear other people’s judgments towards us, as we became very judgemental towards ourselves, trying to be perfect all the time, to finally get that acknowledgment or recognition we are looking for.
CEN has made us develop self-doubt from that fear of judgments from others. It is indeed because of that self-doubt, that we became judgmental about ourselves. That’s why we should stop judging ourselves, all the time. It is also important to recognize that people’s judgment towards us (that we are so afraid of), has less to do with us, but much more to do with them. Every time anyone judges someone, he shows out his insecurities. Actually, there is a quote that says: Every time you judge someone, you reveal a part of yourself that needs healing.
To overcome our fears, there is a tool that we can use, to help us throughout this journey. We call it the Fear Exposure Skill Set, or the Fear Exposure Technique (FET). This tool has been developed by Anxiety-Canada, created in Vancouver, in 2008, by Dr. Peter McLean. Anxiety-Canada is an online – self-help group, to overcome anxiety. It is a non-profit worldwide organization, directed by Mental Health Professionals.
In fact, it is that anxiety we feel toward something – someone, or a situation, that makes us aware of our fear. Sometimes, we experience anxiety but are not quite sure yet, what it is that we are afraid of. Sometimes, we need to dig deeper to find the reason.
Something very positive about the FET is that we don’t need to find the core reason right away. It helps us confront our fears, in the everyday life, at a progressive pace.
So, here’s how it goes:
- Identify the fear that you want to work on ( ex. fear of judgment). You can regroup different personal situations for each kind of fear, in reaction to our past CEN. We can take, for example, that someone’s fear of judgment, is to appear incompetent, in the eyes of other people. He may have different situations that he might be afraid to get into, to prevent being judged as ignorant or incompetent. We can think of a few situations, such as: doing an oral presentation at school, hosting a workshop, doing webinars on a specific topic, training a new hired staff at work, etc.
- Establish a scale of those uncomfortable situations where you risk experiencing that same fear (from the least uncomfortable to the most. on a scale of 0 to 10 ). We call this: a Fear Ladder.
For example, to reflect my fear of judgment or criticism,…
verbalizing a very unpopular opinion in a group conversation scales 2/10.
Refusing to engage in a professional activity suggested by the manager ( even if it is on a voluntary basis ) would be 6/10. It is more anxiogenic for me, as it involves confronting my tendencies of people-pleasing.
- Establish a goal ( when – where – how ) to confront that fear. by facing the uncomfortable situations, you have selected. For example, let’s say that you have this fear of disappointing others. One uncomfortable situation could be, that you are scared of having to say no to a family member. You can plan how to react, the next time this family member is going to ask you for a favor. You can picture what you are going to say to justify your refusal; you can imagine if you’re gonna do it in person, by phone or, by text messaging. For many of us, text messaging would be considered the least uncomfortable way to say no to that family member.
If there are many personal situations you can think of, for the same kind of fear, always start with the least fearful, to the most. We suggest making a fear-confrontation plan for each fear category.
- This is when you take action. You face the fear, following the plan you have put in place,… starting with the least uncomfortable situation and so on, until you get to the most uncomfortable situation. It could take few days to few weeks to get over a Fear-Confrontation-Plan.
It happens sometimes, that we have to go back to step 2 to adjust our plans, for a better outcome. In that case, we restart the process, as many times as we readjust our plans.
- Repetition of steps 4 over and over, for the same fear, until it dissipates. Even if the fear or the anxiety dissipates, you need to keep practicing – engaging in the anxiogenic situation, until you get comfortable in it.
- Self-encouragement ( meaning to acknowledge and celebrate every time we overcome a fear ).
It happens sometimes that a situation we fear shows up unexpectedly. Similar to the FET, there is another method I suggest. Here is an acronym, that I made up: I-PARC (we can even pronounce it ‘’I Parc’’). It is a way to remind us to STOP ourselves from being all worked up about something- someone – situation. We suggest taking some time to slowly breathe, to calm ourselves down, to reduce our anxiety level, to address our fear of the moment.
I-PARC is mostly suggested for anxiogenic situations that occur unexpectedly. I-PARC stands for:
I: Identify the fear or acknowledge the situation that triggers anxiety that shows up unexpectedly.
P: Plan in a very short term, how you want to face this fear or anxiogenic situation, in this present moment (spontaneous plan).
Action: Facing the fear or anxiogenic situation, by putting our small plan into motion. Sometimes it would require to change or adjust the plan for that same situation. We can call this spontaneous reframing.
R: Recall in your mind the level of anxiety you felt, before and after you have faced the fear or anxiogenic situation. Anxiety levels must have decreased a great deal from before to after.
C: Congratulate yourself or even celebrate that you have overcome that fear, or, that you were able to face that anxiogenic situation, today!
In conclusion, I can say that FEAR is the ultimate blockage of our personal growth. The Australien – American preacher Nick Vojicic, actually made an acronym out of the word fear itself: F.E.A.R stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. That’s why overcoming them makes us conquer ourselves. Like the great Greek philosopher, Plato said: For a man to conquer himself, is the first and noblest of all victories.
If this recommendation #4 was helpful to you in any way, feel free to like, share or comment. In the next episode of our CEN series, we are going to see how to Practice Self Expression, as recommendation #5.
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